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© 2006 University of Chicago Library
The collection is open for research.
When quoting material from this collection, the preferred citation is: Small, Albion W.. Papers, [Box #, Folder #], Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library
Albion Woodbury Small (1854-1926) was educated at Colby College, then Colby University, (B.A., 1876), Newton Theological Institution, the Universities of Berlin and Leipzig, and Johns Hopkins University (Ph.D., 1889). He taught history and political economy at Colby from 1881 to 1888, becoming president of that institution in 1889. From 1892 to 1925, he was Professor and Head of the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago, the first department of its kind, and was also Dean of the Graduate School of Arts, Literature and Science from 1904 to 1923. He was vice-president of the Congress of Arts and Sciences at the Universal Exposition at St. Louis in 1904, president of the American Sociological Society (1912-14), a founder of the American Journal of Sociology, and its editor from 1895 to 1926. His bibliography runs to some three hundred titles, including fifteen works of book-length, published between 1889 and 1924. His General Sociology (1905) and Origins of Sociology (1924) have had the widest circulation, while his The Cameralists (1909) is considered the most scholarly of his productions.
Albion Small's papers, which cover the period from 1904 to 1924, are contained in two boxes, and are divided into three general categories: correspondence, academic papers, and professional papers. The correspondence mainly concerns the Universal Exposition, but also contains scattered correspondence dealing with his duties as dean. The academic papers are the syllabi drafts and lecture notes for Sociology 16 (History of Sociology) and Sociology 17 (Conflict of Classes), and his professional papers include book notes and drafts, and research and reading notes.
The Papers are divided into three series, Series I, Academic and Professional Correspondence, Series II, Research, Lectures and Publications and Series III, Addenda.
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